Out­rage as Davis: why anti-Ha­mas it’s right to ad re­jected back Is­rael

THE TIMES has re­jected a pro-Is­rael ad­ver­tise­ment which car­ries a de­nun­ci­a­tion of Ha­mas by Shoah sur­vivor and No­bel Peace Prize-win­ner Elie Wiesel.

Rabbi Sh­mu­ley Boteach, co-pro­ducer of the ad­vert — head­lined “Jews re­jected child sac­ri­fice 3,500 years ago. Now it is Ha­mas’s turn” — said he was shocked at the news­pa­per’s de­ci­sion to refuse it.

In the text, Pro­fes­sor Wiesel says: “In my own life­time, I have seen Jewish chil­dren thrown into the fire. And now I have seen Mus­lim chil­dren used as hu­man shields, in both cases, by wor­ship­pers of death cults…”

Rabbi Boteach, a for­mer Times Preacher of the Year, said his cam­paign had been pre­pared to pay £35,000 for a full-page slot.

He said that as Is­rael fights for its very ex­is­tence, the “in­fa­mously skewed” Bri­tish me­dia re­fuses an ad­vert ac­cepted by ma­jor pa­pers, in­clud­ing The Times’s sis­ter pub­li­ca­tion, the Wall Street Jour­nal.

A spokesman for the news­pa­per re­sponded: “We re­serve the right to re­ject ad­ver­tise­ments.”

He wrote that ev­ery “right-think­ing person” should side with Is­rael in its con­flict with Ha­mas.

“I side with Is­rael ev­ery morn­ing be­cause I be­lieve in the fun­da­men­tal right of Is­rael to ex­ist, in the right of its cit­i­zens to se­cu­rity and in the es­sen­tial duty of its demo­crat­i­cally elected govern­ment to en­sure that se­cu­rity,” he wrote. “Three sim­ple be­liefs which, if we re­place the name of Is­rael with that of any western democ­racy, would not be con­tro­ver­sial.”

While­he­felt­com­pas­sion­forthein­no­cents in Gaza who had lost their lives, he said he could not use num­bers “to judge what is right and wrong”. Be­hind them lay a dis­par­ity be­tween how Is­rael pro­tects its peo­ple and how Ha­mas uses its peo­ple as hu­man shields.

Another com­mu­nal leader, Lib­eral Ju­daism chief ex­ec­u­tive Rabbi Danny Rich, told its mem­bers in a let­ter that he had been silent on the sit­u­a­tion un­til now be­cause he felt “con­flicted”.